Milky Light of a Clinica’s Infinite Gaze

Milky Light of a Clinica’s Infinite Gaze

21 and I’m dispensing eight months of rent
to feel some weighted kind of fleshy titillation

trans girls from YouTube said it would be painful
having silicone bags shoved into the bust –
but then again, all the lips : hands : teeth : tongues
that I know from the meat market are no comfort

it started in May of 2014 when
I posted an ad like the ones on Craigslist
from curious anons and visiting beauty queens
whose wishes broke open with fishy trade

paid lover labyrinths have paid for this endeavour
to cultivate an augmented outlook on my being

this is what it means to hack the body in transition:

two years of hormones are barely enough
for kilogram implants and my little A-cup
to hold one another as if they can handle
the afterward waiting in a stranger’s embrace

never forget the surgeon’s misgendering

deep blue sleep in the milky light
of a clinica’s infinite gaze

hours later when the drugs wear away
I land like a needle on the full moon jellies
infixed below the surface of my tender chest
and cry for the first time this slow world to come

About Daze Jefferies

Daze Jefferies is a multidisciplinary artist-poet-researcher from Beothuk territory in the Bay of Exploits who holds a Master of Gender Studies (MGS) from Memorial University. She is co-author of Autoethnography and Feminist Theory at the Water’s Edge: Unsettled Islands (2018), and she has recent publications in transVersing (2018), Hustling Verse (2019), Riddle Fence (2020), untethered (2020), and Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice (2020), among others. Her forthcoming poetry collection, We Hold a Body of Water Together, explores hidden histories and fishy futures of trans women and sex workers in Atlantic Canada. See more at www.dazejefferies.com.

About Katarina Marinic

Katarina Marinic is a visual and media artist based in Halifax. Gathering content from both real and virtual worlds, she works with digital photographs and 2D/3D animations to create projections and installations. Her practice is concerned with how contemporary digital imaging practices manipulate and alter images, and how they represent the gendered body. She has a Master of Fine Arts (2019) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a Major in Photography (2017) from NSCAD University. She studied Applied Photography (2005) at Sheridan College and works as a professional photo retoucher for a variety of commercial clients. See www.katarinamarinicstudio.com. About Template: This project looks at the potential of imaging technology to see through and transform the boundaries of the physical body, embracing new media as a tool from which one can become an active participant, instead of a passive agent.

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